


why we fight

by ninemoons42



Series: Padmé Lives to Tell the Tale [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amidala family feels, Canon-Typical Violence, Casual Danger Dialogue, Escape from Slavers, Gen, Padmé Amidala Lives, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-06-01 00:16:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6493444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a rescue mission that tilts and turns toward disaster at every turn, Padmé gets an assist from her own children and their band of allies -- and she finds that the children in and of themselves are the very reason to keep fighting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	why we fight

“I don’t want to get lost in this place -- ”

“We are not getting lost,” Padmé snapped, and she knew that at the next intersection they’d need to turn left and then right immediately after. One of the available routes back to the landing pads. There were alternative routes, longer ones, and she would take one of those except that she was running with an injured Jedi and a very young Force-sensitive. 

She was trusting in Fulcrum’s maps and intel to get them back to their ship.

Sizzle-hissing sounds. Another wave of attackers -- she wasn’t going to curse, she didn’t have _time_ , but she could think of the words and spool them off in her mind. A handful of Toydarian oaths and one or two Huttese banes and then she skidded around the next set of corners. Footsteps in blood at her feet. “Kriff,” she muttered.

“Are we going around in circles?” A small voice, high-pitched with both fear and determination.

She knelt and watched carefully over his shoulders for any incoming attackers -- and then she took his hand in hers. “We’re not. I know where we’re going. We’ll be getting out of here as soon as I can signal our ship.”

“You’re hurt,” the little Twi’lek male said.

“It does hurt,” she agreed. Only a hasty application of bandages had stopped most of the bleeding. She could still feel the warm trickle into her sleeves, down into her glove, and she clutched her blaster spasmodically. “But I can’t give up now. We’re so close. We’ll get you someplace safe.”

“I want to help.” 

“You’re already helping, and I’m very grateful.” 

Padmé knew her mouth had pulled into a thin, disapproving line; she kept her glare focused solely on Kenobi. The left side of his face was a mass of half-healed cuts, and his limp had only gotten steadily worse. She sighed and shouldered him into a mostly upright position.

“Jedi Kenobi -- sir -- um,” the little Twi’lek male said, looking worried.

“Ben will do,” Kenobi said, then grunted.

Padmé held the fresh bandage to the slash across his ribs with more force that was strictly necessary. “Can you still run? Because I can call Dormé in -- ”

“No, no, don’t call her in, she’ll have her hands full with the twins and the ship and she’ll also have her hands full of us once we’re in sight -- ”

“You can barely walk, let alone run.”

“I’ve spent nine weeks in confinement and most of those days getting smashed around, of course I can’t look like I’m at my best.”

Padmé bit at the inside of her cheek and tried to find a more diplomatic tone. “I know you’re going to push yourself until you’re more than halfway to dead -- ”

The little Twi’lek male let out a sound of pure anguish and distress.

“-- Sorry, little,” Kenobi said. 

“All that happened to you because you were protecting me,” was the high-pitched response, half a wail. 

“I assure you it was worth it.”

“Except that it won’t be if you _die_ ,” Padmé said. “So come on.” To the little Twi’lek male she said, “It’s better if you use both hands: keep that bandage in place.”

She waited for the shy but determined response -- “Yes” -- before she reached for her commlink and keyed for one of the frequencies. “I hope you’re having better luck than we are.”

“I’m almost at the ship, where are you?”

“Still a few corridors out. I can’t risk moving Kenobi any more than I already have, he’s about to fall on his face. I could use some help.”

“Copy that, we’ll get this thing off the ground, you’d better still be alive when I get to you.”

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Fulcrum,” Padmé said, and despite herself she had to smile, because she could hear her friend’s brash words and she could hear the worry that she carefully concealed in those same words.

Padmé dialed over to the other active frequency and said, “Luke. Leia. The ship -- ”

“We’ve got it,” was Luke’s very, very calm reply. She could hear the sizzle-hiss of laser shots, very faintly, and she could lean on her son’s words. “Leia was listening in.”

“I can see Fulcrum, Luke, go to take-off,” Leia was saying.

“Taking off, got that -- Dormé, the guns!”

Padmé couldn’t hear the woman’s response; all she heard was her son humming calmly under his breath and, at a distance, Leia’s voice rising together with Ahsoka’s.

“Please tell me Fulcrum at least got what she needed,” she murmured at her son.

“Hmm,” was the response -- then quiet, a few answering murmurs, and -- “She says, exact words, _And then some._ ”

Padmé allowed herself a fleeting smile. “That’s good news.”

“I have you on the sensors,” and she envied her son that absolute certainty that he seemed to have found in a cockpit. He’d beaten any number of flight simulators into the ground in the last handful of years. Watching him at the controls of a spaceship, she knew him to be no more than ten standard years old and yet he flew like pilots twice or thrice his age, bar a few adjustments that had to be made so that he could more easily reach certain switches or check on certain boards.

Engine-roar thrumming in her bones, and Padmé hurried back to Kenobi and the little Twi’lek male. Kenobi was heavy, he was mostly deadweight, and she managed to lift him off the ground, managed to shuffle him along. She thrust the commlink at the little Twi’lek male. “Talk to the person on the other end, it might be my son -- ”

“Hello,” said a familiar voice, clear and clarion through the tiny commlink. “I’m Leia. What’s your name?”

Huge eyes turned in Padmé’s direction, and despite the weight of a now-unconscious Kenobi she found an encouraging smile. “That’s my daughter. She’s Force-sensitive, like you. You can talk to her.”

“Hello,” the little Twi’lek male said, after a long moment. “My name is Din.”

“Nice to meet you, Din,” Padmé heard Leia say. “Are you injured?”

“No, but -- Ben is. He was injured because he was protecting me.”

“We can make him feel better,” and Padmé would nod in approval at the gentle and earnest sincerity in her daughter’s words, if she weren’t busy looking over her shoulder. “And besides, my mother is with you, isn’t she? She’s protecting you, too.”

“Mother,” Din said, softly.

Again she tried to smile at him when he looked in her direction.

“I don’t remember my mother,” Din said.

Padmé’s heart went out to him at that moment: beaten and bruised and still trotting along on his own feet. Behind him was the ruins of the frankly undersized cage that his captors had locked him into, next to the cage that Kenobi had been kept in. She could still remember the hope that had flashed across his face at her appearance, hope like wide eyes and his knuckles showing through his vivid orange skin, hope that warred with fear that she might be some other being come to hurt him.

And then that line of thought was cut decisively short as she finally caught sight of the freighter -- somehow she found the strength to _run_ , with the inert body of a friend. The entry ramp was being lowered and she could see someone running down it -- two someones -- 

“Give him to me!” 

No time to think, only time to act -- and as soon as Dormé had slung Kenobi over her own shoulders Padmé turned and picked Din up -- 

“Keep your heads down,” Ahsoka called, and out of the corners of her eyes Padmé could see her friend’s trademark twin blades, bright slashes of light.

How she kept her feet when the freighter kept shimmying from side to side, she didn’t know -- all she knew was that she trusted her children, who had to be flying the thing -- 

She passed the cockpit and saw the two seats, made for full-grown humans, occupied by Luke and Leia. 

“Come around three degrees,” Leia was saying. 

“Three degrees, aye,” and then Luke was shouting, “Guns, please, Ahsoka will need some cover!”

“Going!” Dormé, running toward one of the gun turrets.

Padmé tried to calm the frantic beat of her racing heart and then -- 

“I still want to help.”

She looked down at Din in her arms. 

“Go to the cockpit,” she said, and put him down.

She took the commlink from his hand and hurried to the second turret and yelled, “Dormé and I are in position, tell us where to start shooting!”

“Not at me!” Ahsoka sounded more amused than panicked, however, and that was another source of hope for Padmé’s adrenaline-jolting heart, and then Dormé was shouting -- Padmé grasped the control sticks and put her fingers on the triggers and there, there, she could see them: slavers. The beings who had taken Din away from his family, the beings who had hurt her friend.

She lined up the sights on one of them and -- fired. Triggers moving smoothly, just a nudge from her fingertips and she was firing.

The ship lurched from side to side as her children fought to evade return fire.

Still. Padmé was still.

“More incoming, they must have alerted their friends,” Dormé was saying.

“We can do this,” Padmé said, and she was calm.

“Those are good words, everyone listen to her,” Ahsoka called. And: “We have options, now, we can blow this thing to bits or -- ”

“No,” Padmé said. “No blowing things up.”

“Some other group of scum will come and take over this place and they’ll just keep doing bad things.”

“Unless we take it for ourselves.”

Silence for a long moment.

Then, an unexpected question: “We’re listening, Padmé.”

“Kenobi,” Dormé exclaimed. “I hope you’re not moving around in there, you’re in bad shape, you’re liable to bleed out -- ”

“No, I’m lying down, Din says he won’t let me out of the medbay.”

“Good work, Din,” Luke called.

“There’re only a few of us and this is not a small facility,” Ahsoka said.

“There’re only a few of us _now_ ,” Padmé said. Again the maps flashing up in her mind’s eye. Living quarters, a half-hearted attempt at producing its own food, serviceable sublight engines. A full comms array. “But in the future, who knows?”

“A mobile base,” Kenobi said, and he sounded like he was thinking very hard, very quickly.

“We’d need an army of droids just to make this place more livable,” Dormé moaned.

“And then we could turn those droids to -- other uses,” Leia said.

Padmé smiled. “Yes.”

“That will take a little time,” Luke said.

“And we have plenty of it.”

“We could call this place something innocuous, like -- like _White Base_ ,” Ahsoka said.

Before Padmé could reply, however, alarms began to shriek and she instinctively recoiled from the sound, and the instant blessed silence fell she called, “Children?”

“Laser cannon, we’ve got a laser cannon, I count three mobile turrets,” Leia said. “Give us a moment, we’re going to adjust the ship, give you and Dormé a clean firing line.”

“Get back in here, Ahsoka,” Kenobi said.

“Won’t have to tell me twice,” was the response.

Padmé took a deep breath and sought her earlier calm. Her heart hammering frantically against her ribs -- but she knew she could fight, she knew she could defend this freighter, and she knew she could defend the beings within it.

“We’re going to have to be careful when we shoot at those turrets,” Dormé said, suddenly. “They blow up wrong, we lose this facility even before we take it for ourselves.”

“So I’ve won you over with my idea?” Padmé said, and she found the strength to tease her friend.

“Your _crazy_ idea. Why am I not surprised,” was the fond response.

Padmé grinned, though there was no one around to see her. “Low-power shots?”

“Nothing that drastic. Just try not to hit anything else.”

“That will mean depending on my children.”

“And I depend on the two of them far more than ought to be healthy. Still, it seems to be working out,” Dormé said. “And I hope I haven’t just cursed the whole thing to come down in flames around our heads.”

“We’ve got this,” Leia said, calmly, interrupting them over the commlink. “Just a few more adjustments -- there. Fire when ready.”

“Copy that,” Padmé said, and then she could ignore the steady barrage of incoming fire because she could stop it.

Lessons in handling blasters. She thought back to her instructor, thought back to the handmaidens’ drills, and then it was easy. A handful of precise shots for each turret and it was done: and most of the slavers perished in the resulting explosions, as well.

She could hear the shrill echo of a delighted Twi’lek voice, raised in a hasty cheer.

“Leave the stragglers to me,” Ahsoka said.

“I’ll help you,” Dormé said.

Padmé climbed out of her chair and hurried to the cockpit, and there they were: Luke and Leia and the grim smiles on their faces. The smiles of soldiers who’d live to fight another day.

The smiles of her children.

She held her arms out to them, and a dimple appeared in Luke’s cheek as he wrapped himself around her side.

Leia looked her over for injuries, and Padmé shook her head reassuringly, and then Leia was in her arms, too.

She kissed their foreheads several times each. “Oh, but you were wonderful, both of you. We couldn’t have done this without you.”

“We have to fight,” Leia said. “We have to keep you alive.”

“And I must do the same for you,” Padmé said, and kissed her again.

“Together,” Luke said, the word muffled against Padmé’s throat.

There was a step behind her -- 

Padmé leapt to her feet, and shoved the children behind her -- 

“Sorry,” Din said, his shoulders drooping. “I frightened you.”

“Is Ben all right?” Luke asked. “I’ll go and sit with him.”

“I’ll go with you,” Leia said.

And Padmé let her children go, hiding the reluctance -- that she did not want the little Twi’lek male to see. 

So she offered him her hand, and a small smile. “I must also thank you.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Din said, and her heart went out to him as he tried to shrink away.

“You helped my friend Kenobi. You kept calm. That is more than anyone can ask for.”

He looked like he was thinking her words over.

“Ben says I have to go and train with -- someone else, not him, because he already has students.”

“Yes, and you’ve met those students: they’re my children. As for you, Din, do you want to stay with us?”

Din’s face fell. “I don’t want to stay here.”

“And that is understandable. Bad memories,” Padmé said, gently. “We will find someone who can take you away from here, and keep you safe, and teach you how to use your abilities well.”

Din smiled.

She smiled back, and didn’t let go of his hand.


End file.
